The present invention is directed to a system and method for cyclic variations in altitude conditioning using a pressure vessel capable of transitioning its internal pressure in response to a computer program. One such use for such a system and method is for physical conditioning.
As physical conditioning has become increasingly important to people, companies have become increasingly interested in developing exercise equipment to appeal to this market. With continued research and development, exercise equipment has improved dramatically in complexity and sophistication. Where companies once offered only weights, they now offer a variety of equipment designed for cardiovascular or weight training. Consumers can choose equipment tailored to their specific physical conditioning needs. For example, consumers interested in indoor cardiovascular exercise can now choose from a variety of equipment offerings, including stationary bicycles, stair climbing simulators, treadmills, and rowing machines. Each of these types of equipment provides different advantages and disadvantages depending on a person's physical strengths and weaknesses. A person with a knee injury might choose a stationary bicycle over a treadmill or stair climbing simulator because the stationary bicycle provides cardiovascular exercise with less physical impact to the knees.
In addition to offering different types of exercise equipment, companies have also continually improved the flexibility of their designs such that they can be adjusted to provide multiple levels of difficulty. One of the simplest examples is a treadmill having an adjustable belt speed. Using this type of treadmill, runners can increase or decrease the belt speed depending on their level of conditioning and the type of training they want on a given day. Further, as a runner's physical conditioning increases with continued use of the treadmill, the runner can further increase the belt speed. Newer treadmills have even more advanced features, such as slope adjustments, which allow runners to increase the slope of the belt to simulate different types of hills.
The proliferation of electronics and electronic interfaces in particular has also greatly improved the designs of exercise equipment. Where users once adjusted mechanical levers and knobs to change the setup of a piece of exercise equipment, they now often use an electronic interface to perform the same tasks. For example, adding an electronic interface to a treadmill allows a user to quickly and easily program the belt speed, slope adjustment, length of the run, and other criteria both before and during the exercise. Further, an electronic interface may provide even more sophisticated features, such as allowing users to program in a series of hills with varying slopes into their workout routines and giving users the ability to save such programs to be accessed by personal identification information at any time subsequent. The addition of electronics to exercise equipment has dawned a new era in which many of the old design boundaries have been erased.
Even though electromechanical exercise systems have become more popular in recent years, companies have conducted minimal exploration into the advantages of electronically controlled pressure vessels in physical conditioning. Little research has been conducted on the beneficial effects of changing pressure on the human body for physical conditioning. Recent research into these beneficial effects has shown that exercise equipment involving pressure vessels has positive effects on the general health of humans. Therefore, there is a need for a system and method that can provide these benefits.